NPR fires Juan Williams for Muslim remarks on Fox

Originally posted by pavil

Originally posted by Mak Manto

It's people like Juan Williams who want rights for other Americans to be limited because of their skin color, or their religion, or their ethnicity...

Disgusting...

That is perhaps the most inane thing that has been written on this thread. Juan Williams is a noted writer, mainly about Black civil rights issues.

# Williams, Juan
(1988). Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965. Penguin (Non-Classics). ISBN 0140096531. # Williams, Juan
(2000). Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0812932994. # Williams, Juan

(2003). This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience. Harper Paperbacks. ISBN 0060934247. # Williams, Juan
(2004). I'll Find a Way or Make One : A Tribute to Historically Black Colleges and Universities. HarperCollins. ISBN 0060094532. # Williams, Juan
(2005). My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience. Sterling. ISBN 1402722338. # Williams, Juan
(2006). Black Farmers in America. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0813123992. # Williams, Juan
(2007). The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 030733824X.

I'm not a great fan of his politics, but he seems a decent man who speaks what he believes, and some people don't seem to like that much. That's very progressive of you.........................

And all of this means zero...

Do you see how many black preachers were civil rights activists yet are bigoted against homosexuals?

I don't care how many books the man has written about civil rights... that doesn't make him a non-bigot.

The man is a bigot, whether he likes it or not.

Originally posted by HunkaHunka


If you work for anyone, they always have the ability to fire you for things like this.

Just as Juan has the right to say what he feels, NPR has the right to fire him ;-)

That is the beauty of capitalism! And I support it 100%

The only problem with that is NPR is by no means a Capitalist entity. It is a government funded radio system. Like someone else here said NPR has caused the death of college radio on public stations to a large degree.

Originally posted by HunkaHunka
The man is a bigot, whether he likes it or not.

And he was admitting it.
That's the beauty of it.
He was admitting that conservative muslims make him nervous.
Just as Jesse Jackson admitted that young black men on a city street make him nervous.
He was admiting his humanity .. his weakness ..
A lot of good can come from someone admitting this instead of faking being PC.
Admiting a problem is the first step ....

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
The bottom line is that NPR actions is an attack on freedom of speech.

That is silly. Freedom of speech is the protection of our right to speak our minds, which Juan did and has every right to do.

Freedom of speech is NOT protection from the consequences of speaking one's mind. Congress did not make a law stopping Juan from saying what he said. Congress didn't make a law prohibiting his opinion from being spoken. Freedom of speech is alive and well in this case. But there are consequences to everything we do and say.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean we can say whatever we want and not suffer any consequences!

reply to post by arbitrarygeneraiist


Exactly! Well-said.

Originally posted by HunkaHunka

And all of this means zero...

Do you see how many black preachers were civil rights activists yet are bigoted against homosexuals?

I don't care how many books the man has written about civil rights... that doesn't make him a non-bigot.

The man is a bigot, whether he likes it or not.

Interesting......I have a question for you.....Are you a Bigot too, then? You don't care what the man has written or said other than what fits your own mold. Williams himself said not to lump all Muslims in the extremist category. He also said that there is an extremist part of Islam that is at war with us. Both are true statements as was his opinion on getting on planes.

It's rather amusing to see liberals become sharks and eat their own at the first drop of blood in the water.

Who's next on your hit list?

Originally posted by HunkaHunka

Originally posted by FlyersFan
The guy was being honest about how he feels. So let him be honest. He wasn't preaching that muslims are bad people. He just said that he gets nervous. A LOT of people do. SO WHAT? Heck .. even Jesse Jackson was honest and said he gets nervous walking down the street and seeing young black men walk towards him. People get nervous ... SO WHAT? They can't say how they feel? He wasn't passing it off as 'news' .. he was stating how he feels. IT IS ALLOWED. NPR =

His job wasn't to be honest about how *he* feels, but to perform analysis.

NPR fired him because he had increasingly become more and more of a pundit and less and less of an analyst.

As if NPR is not a form of punditry wraped up in the cloke of analization...fair and balanced.

Mr. Williams firing couldn't possibly be tied to this man could it??

The left loves to go wild claiming that Rupert Murdoch, a famous conservative, owns a few news outlets. The left is also aghast that well known righty Roger Ailes guides Fox News. Ailes’s ideology makes of his network a compromised product, they claim. It’s all a travesty of “news,” and “proof” that those agencies are contaminated by right-wing ideology say lefty detractors. So, with the news that George Soros is buying one hundred political “reporters” for National Public Radio (NPR), one waits with bated breath for the left to decry the fact that a famous anti-American leftist is buying and influencing the “news.”

Its only $1.8 million

he left-wing Open Society Foundations is donating the large sum to NPR for a project being called “Impact of Government.” The project is planning to add at least 100 reporters across the country to cover local state house politics to fill the holes left by the firing of so many local reporters due to the contraction in the field of journalism over the last decade.

bigjournalism.com...

Or maybe it has something to do with this as it relates to Williams' affiliation to Fox News

Media Matters the not-for-profit website that monitors the conservative wing of the US media, has received a $1m donation from the philanthropist George Soros.

The organisation says it will use the money to intensify its efforts to hold Fox News hosts, such as Glenn Beck, accountable for their reporting.

www.guardian.co.uk...

Or maybe the innocent CAIR group had something to do with it.

On October 21, 2010, the Center for Security Policy sent urgent alert notices to Juan Williams, news analyst for Fox News and recently fired news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR); Vivian Schiller, President and CEO, NPR; Roger Ailes, President, Fox News Channel; Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Channel; and the Inspector General of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), regarding a possible violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), warning that they may have been the target of an influence operation by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) which resulted in the firing of Williams.

Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney Jr. said, "CAIR's position that journalists like Williams should normally ‘suffer the professional consequences' apparently created a hostile climate which may have led to Williams' firing. Since CAIR's beginnings in 1994, they have conducted targeted influence operations in the U.S. attempting to censor any criticism of Islam, jihad, and Islamic Shariah law. Their targets have included dozens of reporters, elected officials and ordinary citizens, but they have never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act."

CAIR received $325,000 from the Saudi Arabia-based Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to demand opposition to speech that they consider "Islamophobic." The OIC's "Ten Year Plan" calls on the U.S. government and other nations to enact laws "including deterrent punishments" to counter this so-called "Islamophobic" speech. The U.S. government funds NPR, which fired Williams, through Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants.

According to Gaffney, "The foreign payment of $325,000 to CAIR, and the OIC ‘Ten Year Plan' guidance to CAIR to demand ‘deterrent punishments' - or as CAIR's Nihad Awad put it, ‘professional consequences' - appear to have directed CAIR's influence operation targeting NPR, which may have led to NPR firing Williams."

www.redcounty.com...

So many possibilities. My hunch tells me that a combo of all three mentioned had something to do the Williams' dismissal. Williams is a credible and honest journalist.

My local NPR station WKSU has been officially deleted from all of my presets. Its a shame because they play a superb array of Classical music that I play in my shop.

reply to post by pavil


reply to post by LadySkadi


Thank you both for these important statements from both sides. I think it makes things more clear.

It seems as though NPR has been having some issues with Juan Williams for a while now and were just looking for a definitive reason to let him go. I feel compassion for him just speaking his mind and voicing his fears only to be fired, but I can't say that I disagree with NPR. We don't know everything behind the scenes and the statement you posted is his story and therefore likely leans in his favor. Thanks to LadySkadi for posting NPR's perspective.

The thing is, being a journalist is a job where a certain amount of care and caution is necessary to keep that job.NPR may say that their journalists' opinions don't represent theirs, but when a public person voices his controversial opinions, people are naturally going to associate those opinions with the employer, NPR. So, Williams has a responsibility to report the news (be an analyst), not inject his opinions into it. Like it or not, to the people, he represents NPR. And they have to care for THEIR interests.

Originally posted by Curiousisall
Fox news has gone to great lengths to remind people "Muslim = terrorist"

Exactly. And Juan Williams is being paid off for his compliance and furtherance of this fear.

I understand people having these feelings of fear around traditional Muslim garb, because it's what the media has been pushing for 9 years now. I understand it, but I still condemn it. We need to be more rational and push ourselves beyond what FOX news is trying to shove into our brains! We need to fight against the irrational fears that the government and media outlets use to control us. If I enter a room full of people who look a certain way, I need to remind myself that any fears I feel are MY personal and irrational feelings, that don't relate to reality. And if that's what Williams was trying to say (which I believe he was), then he really botched it. People lose their jobs every day for messing up like this.

This has turned into an exceptional thread! Good job, ATS!

I just listened to this man speak,Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser
www.aifdemocracy.org...

Talk about a class act, he is exactly what we need, an open minded Muslim that thinks addressing the fears and reform is the answer to the question of Muslim and western relationships,

When you shut down the dialogue, that creates the fears, anger, and resentment.

BTW, Juan is not a bigot, he was expressing his fears and why we need to move past them.

Though I wouldn't be afraid to get on a plane with people dressed in Muslim garb, I would be afraid to walk down my street after dark.

reply to post by jibeho



That's exactly what happened,

We need to check ourselves, this is not a liberal vs conservative problem, I don't consider myself liberal or conservative, in some things I lean liberal, others I lean conservative, but there are evil men in high places with an agenda that wont benefit either.

They came for Juan, the liberal, they will come for you.

NPR couldn't possibly suffer from the ever popular Double Standard syndrome that seems to be plaguing this nation and its media outlets.

At NPR, you cannot admit your prejudices, even in the context of disavowing them. You can, however, suggest that a U.S. Senator and his grandchildren should be infected with the AIDS virus, claim the world would be a better place if everyone who believes in the Christian rapture did not exist, claim that Newt Gingrich seeks "a civil way of lynching people," and, as long as you are just a freelancer, call for Rush Limbaugh's death.

That is National Public Radio's editorial (double) standard. NPR fired analyst Juan Williams, an 10 year employee of the organization, for admitting that he gets "nervous" when he sees people in Muslim garb on an airplane. But NPR employees (and a freelancer in one case) have made each of those statements above without suffering the swift action brought against Williams.

Andrei Codrescu, who was on contract with NPR at the time, said in 1995 that "The evaporation of four million people who believe this crap [the Rapture] would leave the world an instantly better place." He later apologized, and NPR left it at that.

The same year, during a heated national debate over federal funding for AIDS research, NPR reporter Nina Totenberg stated:

I think [Sen. Jesse Helms] ought to be worried about what's going on in the Good Lord's mind, because if there is retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.

The year prior, another NPR reporter, Sunni Khalid, said the following on C-SPAN:

I think there's a big difference when people told Father Aristide to sort of moderate his views, they were concerned about people being dragged through the streets, killed and necklaced. I don't think that is what Newt Gingrich has in mind. I think he's looking at a more scientific, a more civil way of lynching people.

Gingrich wasn't the only conservative figure to earn NPR's ire. A reporter for a local public radio station in Santa Monica, CA and freelance journalist with NPR fantasized on the infamous JournoList about watching Rush Limbaugh die while "laugh[ing] loudly like a maniac and watch[ing] his eyes bug out." The radio station disavowed itself from that comment, claiming it "has, and always will be, dedicated to civil discourse and the free exchange of ideas."

Read more: www.newsbusters.org...

Let's be honest folks. The only reason Williams was fired is because of his affiliation with Fox News. We will soon discover that perhaps NPR suffered from a little premature firing by pulling Williams comment out of context.

Boycott NPR!!!! NPR is a one voice organization with no interest in a two sided debate on any political subject.

Originally posted by jibeho
Boycott NPR!!!! NPR is a one voice organization with no interest in a two sided debate on any political subject.

Would you be as willing to call for a boycott of FOX news for the very same reason?

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


Fox news typically hosts guests from multiple sides of a story and in some instances the opposition is invited but declines. Kind of like our president's childlike fear of Fox News.

I've been listening to my local NPR station for decades. Mostly for the music and the amusement of listening to its liberal slant.

Williams' firing is uncalled for. For that reason I will no longer listen to NPR. They crossed a line and cast a bright spotlight on their double standard.

reply to post by Hefficide


What do you expect from News Corp. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of the Saudi king and who was listed last year by Forbes as the world's 22nd richest person and the second largest stakeholder in News Corp., with 5.7 percent of the shares of the media company

So beside Murdoch, Prince Alwaleed can pretty much tell Fox what they can do.

Does this makes anybody feel cozy about News Corp links to Saudi Arabia they practically own half the company.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic

Originally posted by jibeho
Boycott NPR!!!! NPR is a one voice organization with no interest in a two sided debate on any political subject.

Would you be as willing to call for a boycott of FOX news for the very same reason?

LOL BH you work for them?

The thing is people on both sides of the fence are offended, why?

It's wrong BH,
I don't even agree with Juan on all the issues, but I LISTEN to him, why?

Because he is a gentleman, he is the kind of person who makes you think, when a liberal addresses me in a condescending tone and insults, I shut down, Juan can make a point with out insulting you.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic

Originally posted by jibeho
Boycott NPR!!!! NPR is a one voice organization with no interest in a two sided debate on any political subject.

Would you be as willing to call for a boycott of FOX news for the very same reason?

And MSNBC. And CNN. And ABC. And CBS. and NBC. etc etc They ALL have agenda.

Originally posted by Stormdancer777

I don't even agree with Juan on all the issues, but I LISTEN to him, why?

Because he is a gentleman, he is the kind of person who makes you think, when a liberal addresses me in a condescending tone and insults, I shut down, Juan can make a point with out insulting you.

Amen to that! I get tired of screeching...it's nice to hear a reasoned, civil debate once in awhile. Makes me hopeful for this country......

Originally posted by pavil

Originally posted by Stormdancer777

I don't even agree with Juan on all the issues, but I LISTEN to him, why?

Because he is a gentleman, he is the kind of person who makes you think, when a liberal addresses me in a condescending tone and insults, I shut down, Juan can make a point with out insulting you.

Amen to that! I get tired of screeching...it's nice to hear a reasoned, civil debate once in awhile. Makes me hopeful for this country......

Yes, exactly, our news sources and internet offer varying sources of information and checks and balances, freedom of speech and freedom of the press is one thing that make this country great, what I see is certain groups want to suppress freedom of speech and the press,

We all know where that leads.

Political Correctness: Removing your right NOT to be offended.

...

reply to post by Dark Ghost


Specially when you second biggest share holder is also middle eastern men and have links to funding Terrorist.

Fox doesn't want Christian Americans to know the affiliations . . .